I have been in college for a semester, made friends and memories, but it never ceases to amaze me that some people still believe that what my major is means I don’t work. Now at this point, I’ve kind of gotten used to it, hearing the jokes and the banter. The anger always bubbles a bit inside of me and dwindles down below, but I’ve kept it to myself until now. I decided to lay down some facts to people in other majors that communications is harder than it looks and more helpful than you can imagine.
First off, people always think the main reason people chose communications is because it’s easy.
You take a lot of Gen-Ed’s and soar through college like it’s some smooth process ; what people don’t know is that you couldn’t be more wrong.
The thing that people need to remember is that we are all in college and all trying to get a degree. Because we are all in the same school, trying to succeed the same goal, communications majors have to have just as many credits as other majors to graduate on time (mine requires 120). We are all in classes working hard to somehow make a living in this cruel world in the future.
I’m not putting down STEM majors at all. In fact, I give them all the props in the world for choosing those majors. They’re really passionate about what they do and want to succeed. I totally understand that. But what gets to me is when people who are in those majors complain how the work is so hard and then they turn to people like us and say “you’ll never get to experience this kind of stuff thanks to your major.”
The first thing that always runs through my mind is “why the hell did you pick this major if you’re just going to complain about it all the time?” We are all in college. We all came here for a reason, to work hard and make a living and you complaining how hard your math class is isn’t working hard, it’s being a baby. We are all grown ups.
The second thing is my anger. You assume just because of my major that I don’t have hard classes? Alright. Yes, I do take a lot of Gen-Ed’s. Yes, I get to pick my classes, but that doesn’t mean they’re not just as challenging to your supposed “superior” class. We both study, we both stress out, but we both should handle it like adults and not complain.
The third thing that always gets to me is that people sometimes think communications is just talking to people and producing videos in the blink of an eye. That’s wrong, too. All over the country there are plenty off different kinds of majors in the college of communications, from public speaking to telecommunications to broadcasting to journalism to film. We are the people that work hard to produce the content you people watch. Some think it’s easy, but there is a lot that goes into being a communications major. If you’re on the creative side of things, you have to actually be creative, work with other people to come up with something that others might like, learn about the basics, produce, write, direct, edit, promote, speak about, budget and somehow still have time to sleep. Making something takes an extreme amount of time, as anyone in the TV and film industry would know and this is what we learn in these schools, to make the stuff everyone else loves.
On the other hand, students in public speaking, public relations and any other kind of major have to learn how to write the best speeches, promote even the worst person, face hundreds of crowds and then do it all again the next day. The people behind the celebrities in the world work in public relations. The reason you love these famous people so much? Their publicist and assistants, who came to places like this who tell them how to speak and win over the crowd.
The fourth thing that makes me write this the most is that people feel like being in communications is a dead-end major. You won’t find any work. I’m sorry, but literally everything on social media, film, TV, You tube, Netflix, and those kinds of media are from people in communications. Everything needs hundreds of workers to run these things and there is always guaranteed something to do.
Every magazine you see, every video, TV show or film you view, every news article you ponder, someone in communications wrote that and made it good enough for you to come and see it. We may start small, but we work hard and love what we do and everything is always worth it in the end, because this is our passion.
Look, in the end, I have respect for all majors. We are all here to become somebody and be the next big thing. But remember that there is someone behind everything, which includes us communications majors. We work just as hard as you do, so we can be the best possible out let that entertains people like you.
Besides, let’s be honest. We’re all in college and no matter what major you are or what you do, we can all agree that finals week is terrible, sleeping is a no unless during the day and the weekends are the best. We all work hard so we can party all night and we all have that slight mental breakdown when we are in that lecture hall with 100 other people, all taking a test that we didn’t study for because we were too drunk to care.
But hey, you’re only young once, right? Might as well make the most of it and have a great time, no matter what major we are.
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